The present invention relates generally to surgical instruments and, more particularly, to clamps which are utilized during an osteotomy procedure.
In performing the surgical procedure widely known as osteotomy, a bone is divided or cut or a small piece or section of the bone is removed. Once the bone has been cut or the bone section removed, it is necessary to align the bone pieces in a desired configuration and join the pieces together and allow the bone pieces to grow back together. Typically, the bone pieces are temporarily clamped together utilizing a hand-operated clamping device and maintained in alignment at the osteotomy site while a permanent fixation procedure, such as the K-wire fixation or A-O techniques, is completed. At the conclusion of the fixation procedure, the clamping device is removed.
It is well-known in the prior art to provide bone-clamping apparatus for use during a surgical procedure. Typically, prior art devices utilize plier or forceps apparatus having opposed curved fingers or curved plate-like jaws to surround and grip a bone. The clamping pressure is manually applied by action of pivotable handles and is maintained by ratcheting handles or thumbscrew arrangements. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,958,108 to Rush, 4,009,712 to Burstein et al and 4,201,215 to Crossett et al provide examples of prior art bone-clamping devices. A primary consideration in the design of surgical instruments is providing sufficient clearance around a temporary clamp to allow the performance of surgical procedures. Most of the prior art devices provided for surgical access by having handles which, when the clamp was installed, hopefully provided sufficient clearance for surgical procedures.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,475,455, entitled "Bone Gripping Forceps" issued to Reis, describes a scissors-like apparatus having the configuration of forceps with distal ends which are turned inwardly towards each other so that the distal ends are substantially collinear when the apparatus is being used as a bone clamp. The distal ends have sharp points which engage the bone to enable clamping pressure to be exerted between them and to allow the clamp to pivot out of the way of surgical procedures to be performed when the clamp is installed. While the clamp described by Reis is well suited for repair of bone fractures, collinear, sharpened distal ends do not maintain longitudinal alignment well and the sharpened ends tend to dig into the bone.